


so tell me there are things that you regret ('cause if i'm being honest i ain't over you yet)

by jessieflemlng



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst but also fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, but like also childhood to adult, major bill & eddie friendship!!!, richie has adhd and eddie is autistic, woohoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:27:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12339978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessieflemlng/pseuds/jessieflemlng
Summary: Eddie can't help but wish Richie had changed just a little bit. Training in the professional league has bulked him up a bit, but his dark hair still falls into his eyes (Eddie still doesn't know how he can see), he's still got his signature glasses, he's still donning a just-a little-too-big Hawaiian button up, and, unfortunately, he still possess a knack for making Eddie weak in the knees just by existing.or,hogwarts/harry potter au featuring auror!eddie & seeker!richieschool era told by eddie, present day told by richie





	so tell me there are things that you regret ('cause if i'm being honest i ain't over you yet)

**Year 1 - September**

 

Eddie considers himself to be a pretty smart guy.

While he’s fairly clueless about certain social situations and has a tendency to exhibit traits that most people consider strange, but slightly endearing, he knows he’s smart.

His first minute on the Hogwarts Express confirms that.

Despite getting to the station nearly an hour early so he wouldn't miss the train, he then realized that he literally had no danger of missing the train whatsoever and now had to figure out what to do for the better part of sixty minutes. Of course, he knew that by the time he'd decided on a plan of action, it would be time to go anyway, so, he opted instead to curl into a ball and chill out, which led to the unfortunate situation of losing track of time.

When he finally does board the Hogwarts Express, almost every compartment is full. One has quite a few empty seats, but the boys inside give him strange looks, and though he’s not quite sure what they mean, he knows they're not good. The blond boy even has a knife.

Eddie keeps walking.

See? _Smart_.

Eventually, he gets to the end of the car, but stops. He doesn’t trust himself with climbing out of the train and into the next one, and would hate for his Hogwarts homecoming (if you can even call it that) to begin with a broken arm. He sighs, debating whether or not he should just sit on his trunk for the duration of the ride, when something out of the corner of his eye gets his attention.

A boy is waving at him.

He cocks his head and turns around, looking for someone, anyone, that the boy could be waving at.

Nope. It’s him.

Cautiously, he slides open their compartment door a crack.

“H-hey there,” the boy says. He’s got a nice smile and neatly cropped dark hair. “You n-n-need a place to sit?”

Eddie nods.

“You can sit with us,” the other boy in the train says. His voice is a little bit deeper, and his hair is lighter and more curly.

Eddie waits for a second to see if they’re kidding, but their smiles seem genuine, so he quickly tugs his trunk into their compartment.

The curly haired boy helps him lift it into the luggage rack while the other boy says, “My name’s Bill, and this is m-my friend Stan. Are you a first year?”

Eddie sits down, and is playing with his fingers when he remembers he’s supposed to say thank you to Stan. He opens his mouth to do so, but then realizes that Bill has asked him a question. _Crap_. He deliberates for a few seconds, and then decides that Stan doesn’t look offended, so it’s not important to thank him. He smiles hesitantly. “Yeah, I’m a first year.”

“M-me too,” Bill says. He smiles, almost gratefully, and it’s only then that Eddie notices he has a stutter.

Feeling slightly comforted, as he stutters on occasion when he’s really mad or excited, Eddie is determined never to make Bill feel bad because of it. He also makes a mental pact to punch anyone who makes fun of him, but gives himself a few loopholes to get out of it if need be. He’s never actually punched anyone before.

“I’m a second year,” Stan says. “I’m in Ravenclaw. What House do you want to get into?”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. All my family was Gryffindor.”

“A-a-all my family are muggles,” Bill says with a slight grin. Stan shoves him. “W-what? It’s true.”

“Well, what House do _you_ want to be in?” Eddie asks, wondering immediately if it was the right thing to say in this situation. Bill chews on his lip slightly and looks like he’s thinking, so Eddie assumes it must be.

“I don’t know.” He glances at Stan, and then looks down. “I m-mean, I’d love to be in Stan’s House, o-obviously. But I think Gryff-f-findor sounds nice.”

Eddie decides he wants to be in Gryffindor, too.

There’s a brief pause, and Eddie searches for something to say. Eventually, he blurts out, “How come you two are friends if Stan is a second year and if Bill is muggleborn?”

Stan breaks out in a wide grin, and Eddie swears it’s like the sun shining through his window on a Sunday morning.

“Y-you tell,” Bill says.

“Well,” Stan says, “my dad’s a muggle, and he has been friends with Bill’s parents for a while, so we’ve been childhood friends. It was so hard always keeping everything a secret from him, but I managed.”

"I r-remember  once when we were eight, you accidentally m-made the dinner table float," Bill says with a grin.

Stan rolls his eyes. "It took a long time to convince you that you'd imagined it."

"Ah, I n-never really believed you," Bill says thoughtfully. "I guess that's why it was s-so easy for me to believe all the Hogwarts stuff when I got m-my letter."

The three manage to fill the train ride with endless chatter, and though occasionally Bill or Stan will bring up something from their childhood, they quickly fill Eddie in, and so he never feels left out. They don’t get mad when he has to ask them to repeat stuff, and never get impatient when he has to take a few seconds to process what they say.

Halfway through the trip, the lady comes through with the trolley of food. Eddie selects a pumpkin juice, but has to ask, "What candy should I get?"

"What candy do you _like_?" Stan asks, shrugging. 

Eddie flushes, and admits, "I don't know. My mom doesn't like it when I eat candy."

His eyes can barely make sense of all the colorful writing and wrappers. Everything looks good, and he has to wonder if it's considered improper to buy on of everything. He decides it is, and forces himself to return to making a decision. The trolley woman begins tapping her foot, not very subtly, and though Eddie may be clueless about some things, he gets the hint. 

Apparently Bill does, too, because he suggests, “H-how about Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor B-beans? Stan’s favorite. We can t-t-take turns. It’ll be fun.”

And it is.

Eddie lucks out getting chocolate, strawberry cheesecake, and butterscotch, while Bill shoves a whole pumpkin pasty in his mouth after biting into vomit. He then dares Stan to eat what he thinks is chilli, but it ends up being cherry. Five minutes later he bites deeply into the actual chilli one, and steals Eddie’s pumpkin juice while yelling at Stan.

“What? It’s not my fault!” Stan says, laughing. He throws a bean at Bill. Bill throws one at Eddie. Eddie hesitates, and then throws one at Stan. He misses, but the intent is there.

“Ed! Tell him he’s terrible!” Bill shouts, not stuttering once.

“Uh, you’re... terrible?”

“That was _weak_!”

Eddie furrows his eyebrows, but Bill is laughing and dodging the empty chocolate frog box Stan is chucking at him, and he relaxes.

When the dust settles, all three boys look guiltily around at the disarray of the compartment. They know it’ll take someone just a few seconds to clean it up if they use magic, but Stan jerks his head towards the mess, and the other two follow him.

They can just see the shining lights of Hogwarts by the time they’re done. The sun set long ago, and there’s a fog just coming over the mountains.

It’s only then that Eddie remembers where he’s going, and his heart starts racing. He looks at Bill, who’s also staring out the window with a slight look of awe on his face, when Stan leans over and nudges Bill’s shoulder. “I told you it was nice.”

“N-nice? It’s beautiful.”

Stan doesn’t say anything. He just gazes at Bill with a soft look in his eyes and a slight smile on his lips, and Eddie gets the feeling that this is a very private moment.

He resists the urge to run, knowing he has nowhere to go, and instead decides this is the perfect time to change into his robes. He reaches up for his trunk, and has just begun to pull it down when he remembers that it has everything he needs for the entire year, and therefore, it’s very heavy.

Too heavy, in fact.

It comes crashing down, and Eddie stands there in shock with his hands pressed to his ears, staring at all his stuff spilling out of his cracked open trunk.

“Are you okay?!” Stan asks, turning from the window and rushing over to him. When Eddie nods, Bill starts loosely folding clothing and reorganizing books.

Stan cautiously shuffles over to Eddie, and has barely let his palm rest on Eddie’s shoulder for half a second, when Eddie flinches. His chest is burning, his mind is blank, and his brain is replaying the noise of the trunk breaking open on repeat, when he see’s the slight hurt on Stan’s face.

Eddie just gazes up at him, trying to apologize because it’s not _Stan_ that he was flinching at, but he knows he won’t be able to get the words out. Still, when their eyes meet, Stan just nods, and Eddie knows that he knows.

He quietly thanks Bill, and finishes repacking the few quills strewn across the floor. The three boys dress in silence, and Eddie watches as Stan nimbly loops his silver and blue tie around his neck. When he pulls it taught, it looks neat and smart.

Bill makes eye contact with Eddie, and he knows both of them are hoping they’ll get a red and gold tie to complete their own uniforms.

The train finally pulls into the station, and there’s a clamor as the students’ voices collectively grow more excited, and the shuffling of feet turns into a stampede. Stan waves apologetically as he breaks off with the not-first years, and gets into a carriage with a short-haired redhead donning a red tie.

Eddie, a small dude to begin with, gets lost in the crowd of fifth years and third years and, God forbid, the seventh years. Everything is so loud, and he wants to run and hide, but he can’t move, and he just wills himself to disappear.

But then Bill is there, with his half smile that he does. His hair is falling into his eyes, but he takes Eddie’s hand and pulls him along towards the other first years who are now boarding boats. “The boats are a rite of p-passage. Stan told me,” he says.

Eddie nods. Then, “I’m sorry. I’m not good with change. It makes me kinda freak out sometimes.”

“It’s okay.” He shrugs. “M-maybe once the year starts, you’ll be able to settle down.”

“I hope so.” Eddie isn’t one hundred percent sure what makes someone a friend, but he’s fairly certain he can call Bill his. So, he says quietly, “I hope we’re in the same House.”

“Gryffindor?”

“Yeah, Gryffindor.”

The two share a smile, and Eddie feels like the joy in his chest might burst through his throat and light up the sky.

Their moment is broken, however, by an incredibly large hand pointing at a boat with just one boy sitting in it. “Into there ya go,” the man says in a gruff voice.

Eddie follows Bill, and slides into the front with the boy already seated, while another takes the seat in the back.

“Hey.”

Eddie looks up. “Hey.”

“I’m Richie.”

He’s got dark hair that brushes right above his eyes and wide glasses with thick lenses. Eddie swears he forgets to blink or even breathe as he takes in Richie’s rumpled uniform that somehow still looks good. Quietly, he says, “I’m Eddie.”

And then it’s over.

Bill is tapping him on the shoulder and pointing at the castle that looks even more magnificent than it did on the train, and Eddie wouldn’t know how to restart the conversation with Richie even if he wanted to.

Still, as he takes in the look of awe plastered across the faces of every other first year around him, he can’t help but notice that Richie isn’t smiling the way the rest of them are. His eyebrows are furrowed, there’s only a slight upturn to his lips, and his eyes all but glow red in the light of the castle.

Real life foreshadowing?

Maybe.

That night, Richie’s sorted into Gryffindor. He whoops and hollers as his new Housemates welcome him, and when Eddie briefly meets his eyes, the red is burning there again.

To their dismay, neither Eddie or Bill get Gryffindor, instead joining Hufflepuff and Slytherin respectively. The other boy in the boat goes to Hufflepuff as well, and Eddie is relieved to see even the slightest of a familiar face.

His new yellow tie lies proudly on top of his uniform when he goes to bed, and though a small part of him wishes he could be in Gryffindor, a larger part of him is happy to have a House at all. He knows logically that the Hat has never refused to sort a student, but with his luck, he'd be the first. 

The other boy--Mike, he’d said, lays his wand out on the table beside him, and draws closed his curtains with a smile. A blond in the bed across from his yells out a “good night" from beneath his pillow, and Eddie grins as he draws closed his own curtains, hoping one day he’ll have the courage to yell a “good night” back.

 

As the boys around him grow quiet, he wills himself to fall asleep. It never works; insomnia is a staple personality trait of Eddie's, but tonight it does. It might be the rich food or the warm covers or the feeling of finally belonging, but Eddie is off and drifting away in what feels like an instant. 

He dreams of a scraggly boy with messy dark hair and thick glasses. They're in a meadow, they're biking down an empty road, they're sharing an ice cream, and they're happy. The boy has a nice smile and soft hands, and he makes Eddie laugh. He wears colorful shirts, and a proud smile, and his eyes burn red. 

**Author's Note:**

> yay reddie. hopefully the next chapter will be longer. i was gonna edit this more but i got tired of looking at it. thanks for reading!!
> 
> \-- evan
> 
> ps follow me on tumblr @ autistickaspbrak


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